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["For every working journalist in America there, are now 4.6 PR people, up from 3.2 a decade ago" Good article on the ongoing corporatization of the media. The line between journalism and PR is blurred as corporations bypass regular news media to pay for their own (fake) "news" vehicles in order to get their message across. *RON*]

By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Financial Times, 19 September 2014
A population of 100,000 is no longer a guarantee that a city like Richmond, California can sustain a thriving daily paper. Readers have drifted from the tactile pleasures of print to the digital gratification of their smartphone screens, and advertising revenues have drifted with them. Titles that once served up debates from City Hall, news of school teams’ triumphs and classified ads for outgrown bikes have stopped the presses for good.

Last January, however, a site called the Richmond Standard launched, promising “a community-driven da…

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Vice President Al Gore, and movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton all attended

At the People’s Climate March in New York City on Sunday, a 4-ft.-tall walking banana was passionately articulating his feelings about wind turbines.

“They can make things run just by the wind,” said 9-year-old Danny Haemmerle, who dressed up as the yellow fruit to attend the march with his family. “And my parents don’t have to pay as much,” added his brother Eddie Haemmerle, 11, sporting a lime green wig.

The Haemmerles were joined by an estimated 400,000-strong crowd that flooded the street…

Click here to view the original article.[Inside the Good Ole Boys world of the police. *RON*]
John Locher, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 21 September 2014
Detective Bryan Yant was the face of incompetence at the Metropolitan Police Department: a poster child for wrongful shooting deaths and million-dollar payouts, a driving force behind sweeping reforms to the agency’s deadly force policies.

In other cities, an officer who kills an unarmed man under suspicious circumstances and is accused of lying to cover his tracks might be prosecuted. In Las Vegas, Yant kept his job.

And he’s taken on a role that will make him more influential at Metro.

The world’s businesses are shifting gears to take advantage of the growing gap between rich and poor, and that means more services and products for the biggest earners, CIBC said Friday in a client note.

CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld summarized the lessons learned at a recent CIBC investors’ conference in Montreal, and what he found is a commercial environment increasingly focused on serving the wealthy.

“With the rich getting richer, a growing number of businesses are seeking growth from those with money to spend and money to invest. Beefing up private wealth management and mutual fund arms, in both the U.S. and Canada, is front and centre for both Canadian banks and insurers,” Shenfeld wrote.